While working to widen a road near Laguardia (Álava), an excavator uncovered a massive burial site in 1985. There were thousands of bones that took a while to sort through. The remains were bunched up, mixed up and in unnatural positions. The first to study them maintained that it was a mass grave into which the victims of a massacre were thrown. So, the idea that in the Neolithic, thousands of years ago, there were large-scale conflicts, was not widely accepted among archaeologists and prehistorians. Now, the review of that skeleton with current forensic techniques points in another direction: those buried there are those who died in what could be Europe’s first great war.
In the shelter, in front of the hermitage of San Juan in front of Portam Latinam, they finally counted 338 people. Although there are women and children, the majority are men, especially young people. Radiocarbon dated, they were thrown there between 5,000 and 5,400 years ago, in the final part of the European Neolithic. The research, whose results have been published in Scientific Reports, shows that a quarter of them have fractures in their skulls or, directly, holes caused by a strong blow with a blunt object. Most of those who suffer these head injuries are young and adult men and many of them have multiple injuries. In some, the bone shows signs of healing, evidence that they survived them. But half of the marks had not healed.
Researcher Teresa Fernández, from the University of Valladolid and first author of this research, studies violence in the past supported by osteoarchaeology, the study of prehistoric bones. “In San Juan ante Portam Latinam we found many unhealed wounds, that is, perimortem. It may be that what killed them was a wound to the spleen, but they died without the wounds to the head healing,” says Fernández. This is one of the key elements of the job. When the first studies of the site were carried out in the last century, remains with cranial trauma were already observed, “but only one without healing,” recalls the researcher. Since then, several burials of violent origin have been discovered in various parts of the world, especially in Europe, which have fueled the study of violence in prehistory. So they decided to reanalyze the bodies with the support of modern forensic techniques.
They found that 78 of those thrown there (it was not a burial as such) had cranial wounds, almost half of them unhealed, indicating that they died when they were injured or shortly after. But, as the archaeologist highlights, “those killed by violence must have been more.” A fatal wound to the heart could leave its mark on the ribs or sternum, but none on the liver or kidneys, also vital organs, or on the intestines and one would bleed to death. At the site, dozens of flint blades were found, like daggers, there were also axes and other bone weapons that could be from those buried. Metallurgy had not yet been discovered in this part of the world, so they were all made of stone and bone. But there were also fifty arrowheads. Although they have not been able to analyze all of them in detail, most show wear on their contours that indicates that they were used. In addition, they were found intermingled with the bones. And to finish, there are a dozen notches in skulls and bones that fit together with a hand in a glove. That is, they were enemy arrows stuck in the bodies. Overall, there is no other site from European prehistory with so many injuries caused by arrows. “In general, it is estimated that up to 50% of violent deaths do not leave marks on the bones,” recalls Fernández.
“It is estimated that up to 50% of violent deaths leave no mark on the bones”
Teresa Fernández, archaeologist at the University of Valladolid
The first time that the mark of an arrow was discovered on the bones of Saint John before Portam Latinam was in 1999, in a work led by the forensic anthropologist from the University of the Basque Country Francisco Etxeberria. “Most of the prehistorians of that time jumped on us. However, we saw more cases and it was clear that this site was atypical and the greatest evidence of violence in prehistory,” says this doctor, who has participated in some of the best-known autopsies of recent times, from those of Lasa and Zabala, to that of Pablo Neruda, passing through that of José Bretón’s children or various burials from graves from the Civil War. “At least we achieved that, since then, people began to think that the arrowheads found in other burials were not offerings or part of a funerary trousseau, that is what killed them,” highlights the Basque coroner and that was the same thing. It led them to review their own work in San Juan before Portan Latinam almost 25 years earlier.
“The first thing to keep in mind is that a broken bone is not the same as one fractured by a traumatic injury in fresh tissue and that is recorded,” says Etxeberría, who has relied on the forensic anthropology of judicial cases to try to know. from what and how those people died. “It is not a dolmen or a cave. It is as if they had been buried hastily. All on the same day? We don’t know, but they are from a continued conflict,” says the scientist. Unfortunately, radiocarbon dating has not allowed them to narrow the time frame, so nothing prevents us from thinking that they all died in a single battle, but it cannot be ruled out that they did so in successive battles “in a matter of months, at most years.” adds his colleague Fernández.
It is as if they had been buried hastily. All on the same day? We don’t know, but they are from a continued conflict
Francisco Etxeberria, forensic anthropologist at the University of the Basque Country
By going down to detail, the idea of the war conflict is reinforced. Although many of the wounds were caused by arrows launched from a distance or by flint daggers, perhaps thrown from a spear, “several of the head traumas have a characteristically round pattern, with depression of the skull,” says Etxeberria. From his forensic practice, he knows well how to distinguish the mark left by different objects. “It is not that of a hammer, rather it could be that of a mace [como las encontradas en el yacimiento] or stones,” he adds. Most head traumas are found on the lateral and frontal parts of the head, almost always above what forensic experts call the hat brim line (HBL), so They must have been provoked in a frontal, hand-to-hand fight. But half of the lateral blows were to the right side of the head. So half of the attackers were either left-handed or they also came from behind. All clues depict one or more battles to the death with dozens, perhaps hundreds of combatants.
Until now, it was believed that the first great war, or rather the first great battle, took place in the banks of the river that runs through the Tollense valley, in the current state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Germany) about 3,275 years ago. That places it at the beginning of the European Bronze Age. What happened in San Juan before Portam Latinam was almost 2,000 years before. Hundreds of bodies have already been unearthed at the German site, although it is believed that there could be more than a thousand.
There are still many unknowns in the Alava burial site. One of them is the presence of children and women, some of them with marks of violent death. The researchers do not have everything they can to explain its presence. Fernández raises a possibility: “Here we have many more adolescents than in Tollense, which could be because the previous battles could have decimated the adult men and they had to be replaced. If they had to turn to teenagers, why not women?
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